In Medias Res
by Rae L. Road
Summary: There's a story in everything, but Axel's story was written for money. He didn't know that the character he created from his misery, Roxas, would ever be more than words. But when Axel bumps into him in reality, he becomes more than an author; he's a personal God for Roxas. Suddenly, he has a desperate best friend on one hand, and a boy who's life he can manipulate on the other.


**Author's Note:**

God, I'm so sorry guys my finger keeps slipping and I keep writing my new ideas. Anyway, this is going to be a multi-chap story so prepare yourselves. I don't care about anything, man, I am just feeling this story. At Birth will be updated ASAP I PROMISE. This chapter is from Axel's POV, next one will be Roxas's. Here goes.

* * *

**Chapter 1: Escape**

Leaning forward and squinting as if the whole world was on the horizon of his vision, Riku had his foot on the accelerator and his mind on the edge, watching the road and the speedometer with equal vigor as if his life depended on it, which at this point it probably did. The speedometer was reaching towards something like ninety, and I didn't know how much more this heated, sack of horrendous gas mileage could take. But he was breathing like he hadn't breathed in years, running down the pebbles and cracks in the road because he ceased to give a shit the moment I'd shown up, packing my bags with all the most important memories he had forgotten in the last year.

"You little shit," He said with the most authentic adoration I'd ever heard from anyone, "You didn't tell me you were coming to town."

We'd finally gotten a second to talk after I'd shown up at his door with flowers and expired chocolates just to be ironic, after he'd given me the longest and most violent bear hug I'd ever experienced, and after we'd raced into the car with reunion words like "Son of a bitch," and "Get your ass over here." We could've driven like this through the centuries.

I'd rescued him the afternoon of his twenty-second birthday in a small suburb, off the coast of the Chesapeake, from what seemed to be a rotting white fence and an overprotective girlfriend. He'd wanted to jump ship ages ago from the looks of him, pack his bags and ride down the midnight highway to nothing but bitter, lonely struggle because he'd had enough. I could tell because of the way he looked when he opened the door. We hadn't talked, hadn't breathed a word as sincere as the ones we'd exchanged at graduation because there was nothing really to say. We were parting ways. This was it.

Until it wasn't.

Our senior year we used to get in this crappy ford, drive down those deserted corridors in the rural areas you had to squint to find. We would go with all the windows down just for the feeling of the wind at our backs and the road in our future. Because we were boys, and we didn't really have any reason to grow up except for sheer boredom and curiosity.

But in the end, there's always a reason to move on.

We stopped in a parking lot, an impersonal one with smeared ketchup on the floor pavement. It was either from some hopeless dude coping with his life via cheeseburger with everything on it, or blood from a hopeless kid who hated the world and the guts of others just like him.

Everything had a story.

"So, finally come to your senses and decided your life was worthless without your best friend?" He said, sitting in the car with his hands behind his head and his eyes behind his lids, "Took you long enough."

"Like hell," I grinned stupidly, smacking his shoulder with an admiration, "I just got bored like the old days. Then I remembered that there was probably some sick idiot out there just like me who knew exactly the feeling I was going through."

He smiled, "Who, me?" He said, batting his eyelashes because he knew I hated that crap.

"No, your goddamn girlfriend, who do you think?"

He laughed in that hopeful and heavy way he had, just before he looked off into the distance like something was wrong. I'd only ever seen him do that a few times, when his parents split and even though he was older and pretended his life wasn't breaking at the seams, inside was that middle school kid who knew it was coming all along, "I'm in a bad place, Axel."

He wasn't usually an honest person, and it'd been a while since the last time I'd seen him, so it could've been anything, "What's eating you?"

"You remember how I was going to George Washington?" His smile was so thin, that he didn't have to say anything else.

"Oh man."

"That was sort of a lie the whole time," He had this look on his face that was so heartbroken it made me sick to look at him, because he was acting like it was something he'd accepted even though I knew him well enough to know that you don't just take things like that standing up, "Decided not to major in art. Opened up a tattoo parlor instead, just for kicks and to bring home the bacon." He said.

"And?"

"I guess tattoos aren't as popular as they used to be."

I could physically see him give up with that looseness in his shoulders, no more pretending, no more smiling, just a vacancy, and I couldn't take it for a second, "Well you're one lucky son of a gun, aren't you?"

"What?" He turned to look at me then, abandoned the empty window.

"I'm here in Virginia for you, man, but along the way I also decided to come here for business," I said, leaning my chucks up against the dash and turning the volume from the radio down, "Go figure."

"Business? And what the hell kind of business would involve someone like you?" He said, shoving my hand away from the dial and turning it back up.

"Believe it or not, I wrote a book."

Clutching the steering wheel as if we were still driving down the deserted highway to hell, he looked at me like I was a freak of nature with a newfound passion for something that could save me. Something so unexpected that he had to just stare.

"Please enlighten me, since when did you actually care about English class?"

"Since I decided to stop being a chicken shit and tell you."

And then he laughed this relieved and heart wrenching laugh that made me simultaneously uncomfortable but fearlessly enthusiastic, and whether or not that was just because that was the effect Riku had on me or because I was seriously afraid he'd turn the 1989 tin-can-on-wheels back to his house, give me the finger, and shut the door; I didn't care.

"How long have you been writing it?" He asked, turning the radio down which was an act of genuine interest since I'd only ever seen him do that a few times.

"I was working on it throughout high school and finished it up a couple months ago. It's one of those cheap paperbacks you find on the underside of a Walmart magazine aisle, if you look hard enough, to be honest," I said it like it had won a Nobel Prize, "but it's a full written three-hundred and eighty-three genuine pages of bullshit completed in the basement of that old townhouse by yours truly."

A part of me expected Riku to stop smiling, stare out the window like his world had been painted black and white, like he was sitting and watching someone else's success get rubbed in his face. I was extremely careful to avoid that exact scenario, telling myself that if I saw one hint of devastation I'd back myself up and talk about high school. But something about the new Riku had changed. His smile didn't falter like a kid who didn't get any birthday presents, his eyes didn't look lost, they were focused on me and my achievements, and that sheer attention alone was enough to make me shudder and wonder.

"Get the hell out, that's incredible," He laughed that laugh again, honked the horn in the empty parking lot of wherever the hell we were parked, and shouted, "Axel Vallery, an author, who would've thought!"

He took a second to calm down, and I was trying to figure out how exactly he could be so enthused, "Thanks, man." I said.

"What's it about?"

"Oh who knows anymore, it's been through so many drafts. The one thing I've learned is that the editing world is made up of people who can't tell a metaphor from a natural disaster and think that they're justified when they tell you that you're wrong. They think that they know what you're thinking, hell, sometimes that they _are _you, just so they're justified in telling you exactly what they think of you and your heart and soul," I took a deep breath after submerging myself in all those painful atrocities I'd called memories, "I'm still not sure if it was even worth it in the end. My royalties are still coming in, so I have enough to keep up with the lease on my new place, but honest to God I don't know if I could do it again."

"So, if you're giving it up, you're here on business because…?"

"Like hell I could give it up now, the pay is getting better and more regular. Who knew there were that many creeps in Walmart interested in a quick, ballsy read?"

"You gonna let me read it?"

"Maybe when the world ends, sure."

"Awe, c'mon. It can't be that bad if it's selling in Walmart," He paused for a second to think that over, "Well, I'm sure it's on its way to fame, regardless of the bumps in the road."

We laughed over that for what felt like days, a sort of drawn out distraction from my next question. Everything about Riku was beginning to strike me as different after being with him for a while. Even the way he smiled had changed, and I'd only noticed it because it had been so long since I'd seen it. Effortlessly turning the volume back up on the stereo, I had a feeling Riku was starting to figure out that I was going to interrogate him.

"How've you been? Besides the business and everything." I asked, leaning back in my seat with my arms behind my beanie.

He paused for a while, and I thought it might've been because he was upset, but when he spoke he had that new smile on his face, "God awful."

"Care to elaborate?"

"No, but I'm going to for your sake, since I know the suspense will just kill you," He turned the radio further up, still, like he was trying to drown out his own words.

"Girlfriend hates my guts," He said it with a shrug, because none of this was supposed to be serious, even if it was.

"Don't they all, after a while?" I said, eyes closed, listening to the music.

"Yeah."

More silence between us. In some respects, the catastrophe of heavy metal in the background made it worse. Why exactly, I couldn't say, just this feeling of tension and anger started creeping up on us in this deserted little parking lot of our deserted little lives.

I didn't ask him anything else, he spoke when he was ready.

"This was my excuse to get out," he almost whispered it, then took an excruciating pause, "The second you rang the doorbell I knew I could do it for some reason." I barely heard him say that, over the screaming, but when he did I dropped my feet and sat up because I needed to know if he was serious. I didn't touch the radio dial.

He continued, "I'm leaving, I don't care who I'm with, but I'm getting out," He stopped looking at the floor and faced me, "Wasn't that always the plan?"

Clenched fists. A new smile.

I didn't know what to do.

"What?" It was all I could say, because the car was suddenly shrinking around me. I could feel thoughts bubbling around in my head, but I couldn't hear them.

"I'm running away."

"It's not that easy, you remember, don't you?"

"I'm older now, and I can make my own decisions."

"Where are you gonna go?"

"Away."

"That logic worked great for you before, didn't it? Look at where you are."

"I don't have anyone who would come looking for me, Axel. It's either now, or I'm stuck in that goddamn prison of a suburb forever."

He was shouting, betraying that silent promise we made to each other years ago. Nothing was supposed to be a big deal, ever. It was too real, and only people who were old and sad did stuff like that. Parents were supposed to shout at each other, and when Riku shouted at me our world inside that car, drenched in heavy metal and vague teenage memories, had shattered completely. Ripped out from underneath us by a voice that didn't sound like his, a pain that we'd never noticed before, a smile that was neither his or mine.

We spent the rest of the evening switching back and forth between radio stations, one of us would make a snide comment and the other would either laugh or change the station out of boredom. We barely noticed how late it was getting, and how the darkness swallowed the road around us in one fell swoop. After thinking for a while, I put the key in the ignition, turned the brights on, and stopped humming Amanda Palmer long enough to say something to him.

"If you need a ride somewhere," I sighed, the heavy metal lost in the post-sunset of the parking lot forever, "This portable piece of shit might be able to get you a few miles."

…

After basically ridding the nearest 7/11 of its weight in chocolate bars and tasteless stale chips, Riku and I managed to stay alive on the highway long enough to get to my place. He told me that he didn't feel like thinking right now, and that the best course of action would probably be to high-tail it my way for a night or two. I had a feeling he planned on staying longer, but that was just because the first few nights of escape are always the hardest to get through.

And all at once, the memories of high school were becoming more and more sickeningly familiar. There's always this fear of repetition after you graduate, because the whole point of leaving is to, well, leave. Get away from everything. Never do or see or hear about it again. But this time, Riku was finding himself in the same position, a tactless effort to do what was on his mind while he could, to ditch what he started and never see it again. His life was becoming a repetition, and I couldn't tell if I should let him take me with him.

"…a complete dumpster of awesome!" Riku was saying in what sounded like complete awe once we stepped through my front door, jumping around with the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning. He immediately spread himself out on my couch, yawning and picking at the peeling wallpaper of the tiny, decrepit living room, looking as serene and happy as he possibly could in that moment, "Mind if I take the couch? It's closer to the fridge."

I hadn't stocked my fridge Riku-full recently, and I was starting to regret that decision (even though I hadn't really been expecting semi-permanent company), but nevertheless I sighed and a weak little smile crept its way onto my lips, "No problem, just remember that I gotta eat, too."

"A'course," he smiled, took a chip from the decrepit bag of Lays resting noisily on his chest, "I gotcha."

I headed over to my room at the end of the hall, sat down in my bed before awkwardly realizing that when the door was open, because of the way my bed was situated against the wall, I got a direct view of Riku looking at me from the couch with chip remnant hanging from his lower lip. He broke into hysterical laughter.

"Great, now I have to watch you drool all night," I shouted to him over his howling, "Just please keep the snoring to a minimum, alright? I have obnoxious flat mates."

"Just close the door, man," He said between bouts of laughter, "Unless you wanna see me dead asleep and sprawled all over your couch in the morning. It's not a pretty sight."

"Alright," I grinned at him and got up to close the door.

"Oh, Axel, one more thing."

I stopped and looked at him, my expression gradually getting more tired as I did so.

"Thank you." He hugged a pillow to his chest and curled into a ball, he didn't need a blanket, didn't have time for one because he was already starting to doze off. He probably hadn't had any sleep for days.

"Yeah," I said solemnly, and closed the door.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of Riku's ass hitting the cold, hard tile on the kitchen floor and an embarrassed and vulgar shout coming from somewhere suspiciously close to the fridge. I opened the door and braced myself for the worst.

Sitting with his legs crossed and his hands full of my own personal junk food, Riku was pretending that I didn't exist and coping with his problems through theft and glucose.

When I approached him questioningly (the thought had definitely crossed my mind more than once to ask him what in the name of fuck was going on), he refused to make eye contact and muttered, "Breakfast."

"With frozen peaches and six-month-old Oreos?"

"These are six months old? Preservation technology is really astounding, isn't it?" He muttered as he threw a couple in his mouth.

I grabbed them from him to make sure he wasn't going to get food poisoning under my watch, couldn't you be sued for that or something? "You're a goddamned bum, Riku."

He laughed through his teeth, "Says you," He stood up and put the peaches on the counter with such care that I rose my eyebrows, "You're the one who has all this crap, anyway."

He had a point. I chucked the Oreo at him that I'd grabbed earlier.

After settling our dispute through a mild yet manly food fight that I had to put an end to for the sake of my new place, we ended up sitting on the floor together and eating what was left of the food he'd scavenged from the crevices of my cupboards. We were treating this whole ordeal like it was one giant sleepover that we didn't have to address, like it was something that came naturally. But the fact of the matter was that Riku had gotten incredibly better at hiding his problems, and I'd gotten better at reading him.

Before I'd walked in here, I knew he had been in a sort of terror of his own. I needed to find out what was going on with him solely because of the way he was acting and how secretive he was being.

"How long have you had this place?" I was spacing out, so I hadn't realized the fact that I'd left Riku alone to rot in a thickening awkward silence, "It's not completely torn to shit yet, and you said it was pretty new earlier."

"Huh, yeah." I responded vaguely, coming back to the situation at hand, "Yeah, it's new. Just got it with the royalties, but honestly I don't think I'll be able to afford much more of this. The book is kind of shitty."

"You never answered my question before," he asked, and even though we had run out of food because I could barely afford Oreo's from six months ago, we were still sitting on the cold kitchen ground because it was personal, "What is it about, really?"

"Nothing," I answered automatically, and I was being pretty honest, "It started turning into incoherent shit towards the end because I started getting desperate."

"That makes sense," He smiled, got up from the floor and started absently back towards the couch to probably fall into a violent coma, "Don't the best stories happen when the author gets desperate?" He smiled at me, because we both knew he had no idea what he was talking about, and rested his hands behind his head in a casual attempt to look like a deep thinker.

"Well, it's not getting popular any time soon."

"And we're not getting any less desperate, either."

I stood up, and looked down at him lying on the couch. It was morning, and the windows were open, so I could see him for what he was. First off, he was covered in bruises. Watercolor bruises covered his chest, and now that I thought about it where the hell was his shirt because I didn't want him stinking up my new couch with his sweat. His silver-blonde hair was matted around his face in a way that used to look nice on him but now he just looked greasy and pained because of the expression his hair was surrounding. It was sort of hard to look at, especially since I had no idea where the hell he'd picked up this look. It was disorganized and foreign so it started to scare me.

"What's going on?" I asked. He knew what I was getting at.

"My life," He grumbled in a half-asleep, half-stuffed murmur, "I wasn't ready for it."

"Oh don't give me that bullshit, who ever really is?"

"This girl was so pretty, you know, like a…flower…a dandelion of trouble."

"You get poetic when you're tired now?"

"I am unconsciously Shakespeare, I swear to God."

"Any other poems I should know about?" He opened his eyes a little and squinted into the sun as I said that, like someone who had forgotten what the sun even was. I did us both a favor so that he wouldn't have to look pained and I wouldn't have to watch him. I got up from my seat on the kitchen table and closed the blinds.

"Anyway, her name was Namine, and she was pretty like I said, and great in bed—"

"Not that kind of poetry, man." He laughed at that, quietly.

"Sorry," He shifted off of his back and on his side so he could face me, "She had a career going for her, but she said she was in love, so she dropped it all to be with me—"

"Can't really blame her, can you?" He didn't laugh. Not even quietly. I kept my mouth shut.

"Stupid," He closed his eyes and was somewhere else in a second, living some memory, "Stupid girl."

He took a second to catch his breath, and there was a silence surrounding us that was as personal and cold as the kitchen floor.

"She ditched her family, sounds familiar," He sighed, "And it was too late for her when she realized that I was sort of aloof in my thinking and only managed to start up a doomed tattoo parlor. But something in her soul told her that she could trust me, that she could lay all this shit on me and it'd be fine. Long story short, the business failed because I'm an awful salesman, her whole family's turned against me along with her, so I felt like a failure and an idiot; and what do idiots do, Axel? They drink, and Lord, did I drink myself to idiocy."

We looked at each other.

"The end. Credits role. Director: God and his sadistic sense of humor."

I rolled my eyes for a second, on reflex, "Yeah, let's blame God." I said under my breath. Why can't I ever keep my mouth shut?

"Who the hell are _you_ blaming then?" He sat up on the couch, threw the pillow violently to the side and almost knocked over a lamp, "You're my friend, and you can't blame me."

"Who's blaming you?" I tried fruitlessly to back pedal.

"I blame me, but you can't blame me, Axel, you're my best friend!" He was standing up now, and at first I flinched because of the movement of the relatively expensive furniture, but then I realized that I was flinching because of the intensity and desperation of his stare.

If this were anyone else I would tell them to get help, to go back and face it head on because I didn't care. I'd never cared about anyone like this, and it was scary to think that Riku was that person for me. A best friend.

So I did what I had to do; I did what he wanted.

"I don't blame you," I spoke slowly and I chose my words carefully. This was one of those things you had to think about even though both Riku and I obviously hated thinking, "I'm running off of very few details here, man, I'm trying to help."

"You want more details?" He started yelling and for a second I was going to tell him to be quiet, because we were comfortable enough to say what we had to say to each other, but that was years ago and I was having a hard time reminding myself that he had changed. We both had our secrets, even in high school, "I'd never had someone depend on me for something before. I just—" He threw his arms up in the air, "I just blew it! But she was stupid enough to trust me. Hell, I was stupid enough to trust me."

He looked up at me, as if to ask if I trusted him. I didn't answer because he didn't need anything else to think about. I was the last person he could go to.

"I had to get out, Axel, you get it, right?" His voice was dragging on with this unstable quality, "You of all people get it."

"I do," and I did, "But it's still your move."

He stopped what he was doing, and suddenly we were seventeen and standing outside of his house the night he ran away from home. His packed bag and my mom's pick-up truck were the only things with us. We were headed for the stars and no one could stop us. His parents split from each other and split Riku in half, and I watched. Couldn't tell which was worse, didn't care to know. We didn't know anything. We just knew that maybe there was something better out there. We had to know. If we didn't believe there was, then what was the point?

"It's my move," He breathed, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure he wanted me to hear, "I'm broke." He said finally, exhausted, "I spent all my money on booze and broken promises."

"Calm down, Shakespeare," I approached him and put my arm on his shoulder reassuringly. He immediately relaxed his arms, as if the weight on my hand replaced the weight that had been on his shoulders for so long, "You can room with me like old times."

"Are you kidding?" He laughed in this tortured way, "You can't afford it."

"You're not worth much." I smiled and we cackled lightheartedly, like kids.

"Well, my appetite is," He sat back down on the couch and I sat on the arm rest, "You're already out of food."

"You have a point, there," I said it like it was no big deal, and maybe I should've been panicking. But I wasn't thinking about how I'd have to hide Riku so the landlord didn't know I had a roommate, I wasn't thinking about how my only paycheck was from royalties and I didn't have a degree to get a decent job doing something I liked doing, I wasn't thinking about dependency and all those other things that Riku had forgot about these past few years. We were more alike than we thought.

The next few days were the realization and the panic. When I wasn't at the library, I was at my apartment hanging out with Riku, watching old movies and talking about stuff that was so hilarious we forgot what it was like not to laugh. The next day we could never remember any of the jokes, and that was probably because Riku would bring home a drink from the bar with money that I didn't question. We were happy because we ignored everything.

We were both hungry, but we didn't want to tell the other to get a job, didn't want to get in an argument because Riku was terrified of being on his own and I was terrified I'd lose him.

"You know," Riku came up to me one of those days (I couldn't tell them apart anymore), I was reading She's Come Undone, and I heard his voice once I got to the end of the page, "You could always write another book, if you wanted."

That was his polite way of telling me to get up off my ass. I was sort of angry, because he was a hypocrite, but the way he was looking at me I knew exactly what he'd say. The last time he tried to get a job everything died, so why should he do it again?

"Oh? And what would I write about?"

"Life or something," He grinned, "I don't know how this works."

"I could write about vampires."

"At least you'd be on the best sellers list."

I blew air out of my nose and stared at my book. Inspiration hardly ever came to me. I'd read a lot of amateur FAQs about it because I was bored, but writers block was still a terror that I didn't have the stamina or integrity to deal with. But for a second I faced it head on.

The next few days I didn't laugh as much, I was ready to do something about the rut that I'd gotten myself in with Riku. With or without him, hadn't I expected this? The inevitability of writing something again? I'd gotten one thing published, so of course I had planned to make something of it. Or was I just as stupid as I thought I was?

I was at the library until it closed every day, Riku would ask where'd I'd been and I'd grab some vodka off of the counter that he'd brought home and drink until my vision was a kaleidoscope of indecision, until I was a hacking sack of heartbeat and heavy breaths on the floor with my best friend. Until there were clouds on my ceiling and I lapsed into the most peaceful and lazy unconsciousness I could imagine.

One morning I woke up and saw Riku lying next to me on the floor. I could hear his stomach growl, and I couldn't tell which one of us was worse for wear. We were running from reality, and we had been for so long that this was where we were. Running…running…

And then I had it.

I raced to my dilapidated laptop, accidentally kicking Riku in the head in the process (ignoring the muffled, "You wanna go motherfucker," from his hung-over mouth), and sat down at the keyboard.

I had the character in my mind.

He was curt, defiant, and he could do anything. He was running from something, from anything, and he was free. He was braver than both of us, and the only thing he was looking for was the thrill of a million and one lifetimes.

He was Roxas Wolfe, and he was perfect.

The first line of a best seller was on my fingertips. I didn't know if I was right, all I could do was pray to whatever being was up there for a hint of mercy. I started typing it in with the weight of the world on my shoulders. This was it. This was my attempt at finding a purpose.

"This was running."


End file.
